Are you competitive?
The answer is “yes.”
We are all competitive. At least to some extent.
You may not be the ultra-competitive type who throws tantrums when you lose (FYI: if you are, that’s another post.). Perhaps you’re much more laid back and claim to be uncompetitive. But that’s not wholly accurate. Every single person lives with a version of competition. Some are stronger, and some are more hidden, but competition is present for every person – especially every leader.
If you care about your organization’s success, you are competitive. You compete against failure. You compete against your competition. You’re competitive in your own way. You want to lead a winning team. You want your mission to be fully realized.
Competition can certainly be unhealthy. When we compare ourselves to others, we can quickly become prideful, envious, or some combination of both. I’ve never seen a church leader grow more emotionally healthy by comparing their congregation to another congregation.
Yet without any competition, we will languish. Ignoring competition entirely causes us to miss opportunities to be our best.
That is the cost of removing competition.
A specific version of competition is essential for our future. I’m writing this from the church leader’s perspective, but his essentially applies to any and every form of organizational leadership. First, let’s look at two common versions of unhealthy competition before we target our primary competitor:
1. Other Churches as Competition
I’ve spent 15+ years leading local churches and now serve dozens of churches and leaders through my consulting practice. I recently conducted a strategic planning meeting with a church when a team member positioned the other churches in the area as “our competition.”
I let that comment sit in the room for a few seconds. It’s such a typical viewpoint. We see the world as scarce. There are a limited number of church-attending people, and we need to maximize our market share in competition with other churches. After all, this is how businesses see the customer. Companies look at market share all the time.
However, this is an entirely incorrect way to engage competitively as a church. When it comes to church, resources and people are never limited. Focusing any of our competitive energy on other churches is a waste of our focus and is unhealthy.
Think about it: If other churches are your competition, they lose when you win. When your church grows, they close. The Kingdom impact is net neutral at best. That’s not a win. That’s unhealthy competition. That’s sheep swapping.
As a church, your competition is the lake, travel sports, and apathy. You’ll never beat your competition if you compete against the wrong thing.
2. Other Leaders as Competition
Every other leader is better than you at something. Therefore, if you compare yourself to others, you’ll often find yourself wanting and personally unsatisfied. You’ll identify one or two areas where you win, but you’ll focus on the spaces you don’t. That’s how our competitive heart works.
Other leaders are terrible competitive benchmarks because they were made uniquely different from you. If you are a preacher and compare yourself to Andy Stanley, you’re in trouble. You may disagree with him theologically, but he’s probably better than you as a communicator. If you compare yourself to Carey Nieuwhof, you’ll quickly recognize he has more influence than you. If you compare yourself to Craig Groeschel, you’ll lose the systematic church grow game (Life Church has 2.5 million campuses, I believe).
There is no win when we compare ourselves to others. We live with ever-growing envy. Perhaps worse, we live as if God made a mistake. You lose sight of who you could be when you focus on who you weren’t meant to be.
Competition, left unchecked, is often detrimental. Yet competition is vital for our personal progress.
Why We Should Stop Comparing Our Average to Everyone Else’s Awesome
Healthy Competitors Compete with Themselves
Picking up from the last statement, competition is critical to our personal growth. When we compete against our potential, we evaluate where we are against where we believe we could be based on who we are, not who others are. We assess how we grow within our unique giftings, capabilities, and skills. We compare our aspirational future selves against our current selves.
This is why I enjoy sports like golf or weightlifting. In golf, I’m rarely (if ever) concerned with beating my playing partners but always concerned with improving my performance against previous efforts. Weightlifters write down the number of reps per set at each weight to evaluate how they are progressing against their last lifts, not the professional bodybuilder on the neighboring bench.
As a speaker, you shouldn’t compete with Andy Stanley, but instead, compare yourself today to yourself last week or last year. Compete with yourself. Try to be better tomorrow than you were yesterday.
Competing with yourself is the healthiest of competitions. Sure, even this can get out of hand if left unchecked, but this version of competition is the safest version for your heart, team, and organization.
You are uniquely gifted. Competing with yourself allows you to maximize your gifting. To maximize your potential. This is precisely what the world, your team, and the Kingdom need.
How can I help?
Most of my clients consider me their CSO (Chief Strategy Officer). Partnering with ministry and marketplace leaders from innovation through implementation is why I created Transformation Solutions. I’m dedicating my time to helping leaders like you discover potential problems, design strategic solutions, and deliver the preferable future. That includes you.
